Denise Richards Will Never Sing in Public Again
E! Online
Marc Malkin – Mon May 4, 4:14 pm ET

Los Angeles (E! Online) – Denise Richards wants you to know that there's a very good reason she sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" the other day at a Chicago Cubs game.

And, unlike other onscreen vixens like Leighton Meester, it certainly has nothing to do with her trying to impress people with her singing abilities.

The E! reality star knows she cannot carry a tune, but…

Richards was in the Windy City for a fundraiser for the Kidney Cancer Association (her mom died of the disease about a year ago). While she was there, Richards asked Cubs management if the group could set up an informational booth at Wrigley Field during Friday's game.

"In return, they said, 'Will you sing?' " Richards explains to me. "So I said yes, because it's for a good cause and we want to raise awareness about kidney cancer."

Unfortunately, the cancer message got lost along the way, because as soon as video of Richards' performance hit the Internet, the trashing began.

"I'm clearly not a singer," she says. "I wasn't doing it to show off my pipes. Thank God I wasn't singing the national anthem. But I thought it would be fun...I had no idea the backlash I would get."

As for her critics, Richards said they need not worry about her ever singing in public again.

"It took everything in me to get up there and do that," she says. "My dad and my sister kept saying, 'Just remember you're doing this for Mom,' so that's how I got through it. It's just unfortunate that doing something good was turned into such a negative."